The mini-major is headed in a new direction, steering away from the grisly horror films that helped establish it and towards other genres. Will it work? Judging from the films in their line-up at Con this year it looks uncertain.
Saw V Pretty much everyone involved turned out for the panel this year including actors Tobin Bell, Julie Benz, Costas Mandylor, Scott Patterson and Betsy Russell along with scribes Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton, director David Hackl and producers Olen Koules and Marc Berg.
After screening the pretty stylish teaser trailer, the cast spent much of the time talking about how they couldn't talk about anything in the film. Scott Patterson, the guy in the trap seen in the trailer, says his character's details and fate are being kept secret. He does admit that the trap he's in, which could not have been achieved with visual FX says Hackl, took him a full day to shoot and had him hyperventilating on the first take.
The big thing of note was the clip with a murderer offered the choice of cutting off his hands or being sliced in half by a giant swinging pendulum. A better clip than last year's disappointing "Saw IV" opening clip, but still hard to say how this will turn out.
Punisher: War Zone The reboot of the franchise with Ray Stevenson as Frank Castle premiered a super-violent extended music montage with a very 70's vibe to it. Many of the gunplay scenes had the awkward cutting and scratching effect last seen in "Grindhouse", and a very hardcore approach with chair legs slammed into eye sockets, people falling onto sharp fences, bullets causing heads to explode, and various glimpses of the villain Jigsaw (Dominic West) attacking people. A new trailer also premiered but was toned down and seemed very similar to the original teaser released last month though again with Jigsaw finally appearing.
Stevenson, Julie Benz and producer Gale Ann Hurd showed up and talked about the film which will resemble the "ruthless, ultra-violent vigilante justice" of the Max line of the Punisher comics and has no connection to the previous films with Thomas Jane and Dolph Lundgren. Set in New York City this time, the film aims to show off the more psychological and human traits of the character to make sure the audience knows this is not a superhero - just a man hellbent on revenge.
Stevenson did real military training for the role and the film's equipment is all current army tech. Asked if he would do a sequel he said "If I had my wish, it's going to run and run. It's up to the fanbase. If this works, we get to do it all again." Director Lexi Alexander was hired because of her experience as a stuntwoman to help the authenticity of the film's frequent violence, but she couldn't be there that weekend due to being on her honeymoon according to Hurd. Nevertheless rumors have swirled at AICN this weekend that both she and the film's composer have been booted off the project altogether.
The Spirit The most promising project was the Frank Miller-directed comic book adaptation "The Spirit", and yet even it. Miller, producer Deborah Del Prete, Gabriel Macht, Samuel L. Jackson, and Jaime King all showed up to promote the project and showed off three clips indicating the film veering away from the gritty "Sin City" comparisons in favor of an almost screwball comedy approach at times despite Miller's protest that there’s nothing campy about the film's humor.
Response to the already released trailer's screening again was polite but not enthusiatic, better were the various clips but they're still uninspiring. A fight scene clip had Spirit (Macht) and Octopus (Jackson) basically in a brawl with various objects wacking each other from a spanner to a crow bar, to bricks to even a toilet. Another scene has Spirit trying to seduce Ellen (Sarah Paulson), and then a rookie cop who walks into the room - naturally a pissed off Ellen throws a scalpel at the door behind him. Finally a scene had Eva Mendes fighting with Octopus and then diving underwater trying to retrieve a chest and come up inside a darkened building. That scene was shot using a new kind of super-speed camera thus allowing Mendes to simulate swimming underwater which will be added by visual effects later.
Samuel L. Jackson revealed that the size of the guns of his villainous Octopus character grows larger each time he shows up, meaning that by the end they were so ridiculously huge they had to be custom built by hand. Louis Lombardi (Edgar from "24") plays the Octopus' henchmen who all come from clones. Thus they have limited intelligence and, like South Park's Kenny, are killed in various elaborate ways throughout the film. The film's time is not distinct - the 40's style outfits are mixed with cell phones.
